St. Thomas Aquinas

RNH Academic Director, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, attended the annual meeting of APEE, Association of Private Enterprise Education, in Las Vegas 3–6 April 2016, where he chaired one session and gave a lecture in another, about business ethics. Professor Gissurarson discussed the position of St. Thomas Aquinas who taught that merchants did not have to inform their customers of their own evaluation of circumstances (in the famous tale of the merchant from Alexandria on the island of Rhodes), but that they should not, on the other hand, make use of desperate circumstances (such as a city under siege) in order to achieve unfair outcomes. In this connection, Gissurarson described how Norwegian, Finnish and Danish financiers had, after the Icelandic bank collapse, acting in collusion with their respective governments, acquired assets of the fallen Icelandic banks for a pittance, Glitnir Bank and Glitnir Securities in Norway, Glitnir Pankki in Finland and FIH Bank in Denmark. Gissurarson argued that the behaviour of these financiers would have been deemed immoral by St. Thomas.

Economist Gerald O’Driscoll, former Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, was elected President of APEE. Board members include Professor Robert Lawson who had visited Iceland on the invitation of RNH and given a paper on the index of economic freedom. Gissurarson’s lecture in Las Vegas formed part of the joint project by RNH and AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, on “Europe, Iceland, and the Future of Capitalism”.

Gissurarson Slides Las Vegas 5 April 2016

Prof. Gissurarson at Rockford University.

RNH Academic Director, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, gave three lectures in the United States in the spring of 2016, comparing the Nordic economies in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland on the one hand and the Nordic economies in Minnesota, Manitoba and South Dakota on the other hand (leaving out the oil-rich states of Norway and North Dakota). Living standards turned out to be significantly better in the Nordic economies of North America. Professor Gissurarson argued that this was because in North America more opportunities were available to produce oneself out of poverty. It was true, he submitted, that the Nordic nations in Europe had managed to develop an attractive system of affluence and security, but that this had happened despite, but not because of, high taxes and efforts at redistributing income. It should be emphasised that the Nordic economies were open and relatively free, protected by the rule of law.

The lectures were held at the University of Indiana in Bloomington 30 March, at the Heartland Institute in Chicago 31 March and at Rockford University 1 April. They formed a part of a “Free Market Road Show” organised by Dr. Barbara Kolm of the Austrian Economics Centre in Vienna. The lectures also formed part of the joint project by RNH and AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, on “Europe, Iceland, and the Future of Capitalism”. The seminar at the Heartland Institute was taped:

Gissurarson Slides Bloomington 29 March 2016

From left: Prof. Gretar E. Eythorsson, Prof. Gissurarson, Canadian Ambassador Stuart Wheeler, and Dr. Gudni Th. Johannesson.

RNH Academic Director, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, gave a lecture 19 March 2016 at a conference at Akureyri University on international affairs. According to him, foreign powers only took interest in Iceland for a brief period of history, while it was true that their fishing vessels had for centuries been operating in the fertile Icelandic waters and had been reluctant to leave when Iceland extended her fisheries limits. Iceland had for a while been strategically important as a consequence of new technology in warfare, submarines, airplanes and weather forecasts, both in the Second World War and in the Cold War. This had changed after the collapse of communism. It had become apparent in the 2008 international financial crisis that the Anglo-Saxon powers had lost interest in Iceland. Nevertheless, Iceland’s place was in the North Atlantic and her natural allies remained Norway, the United Kingdom, Canada and the US.

The many speakers at the conference included Dr. Gudni Th. Johannesson, Associate Professor of History, on relations between Iceland and the US in 1976–91, Professor Eirikur Bergmann on the Icesave Dispute between Iceland and the UK, and Bjorn Bjarnason, former Minister of Justice, on the pursuit of a new balance of powers in Northern Europe. Gissurarson’s participation in the conference formed a part of the joint project of RNH and AECR, the European Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists, on “Europe, Iceland, and the Future of Capitalism”.

Glærur HHG á Akureyri 19. mars 2016

Prof. Gissurarson and fmr. Minister Jonasson.

RNH Academic Director, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, gave a talk at a political seminar for Young Left Greens 5 March 2016 on whether Iceland was too small to be sustainable as an independent political unit, as some had claimed after the 2008 bank collapse. Professor Gissurarson described many advantages which small states enjoyed, explaining their proliferation after the Second World War. By means of free trade such states could benefit from the international division of labour and from economies of scale, without developing the lethargic, clumsy and non-transparent bureaucracies of many bigger states. Small states did not need shelters that turned into traps: rather, they needed free trade with the rest of the world, flourishing mutual relations and defence arrangements with bigger states: Iceland should for example pursue such arrangements now with the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Norway.

The other speaker at the seminar was former Left Green Minister Ogmundur Jonasson. After their talks a lively discussion followed, not least about justice in income distribution and about increased consumer choice in health. Gissurarson’s participation in the seminar formed a part of the joint project by RNH and AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, on “Europe, Iceland, and the Future of Capitalism”.

Gissurarson Slides Left Green seminar 5 March 2016

Icelandic Stalinists suffered their biggest blow in the winter of 1956 when news spread to the West about a secret speech that Nikita Khruschev, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, had given in the Kremlin in the night of 25 February. There, he admitted many of Stalin’s misdeeds: The dictator had had innocent people arrested and tortured; he had completely failed during the German invasion of 22 June 1941; he had deported peoples and national minorities from one end of the Soviet Union to the other. The speech was an international sensation, not least in Iceland where a well-organised communist party had been active and influential since 1930, operating under the name Socialist Unity Party from 1938 to 1968. Staunch Stalinists, Brynjolfur Bjarnason, Einar Olgeirsson and Kristinn E. Andresson, dominated the party while writers such as Halldor Kiljan Laxness, Johannes from Katlar and Thorbergur Thordarson eloquently defended Stalin. Laxness and Johannes from Katlar even composed eulogy poems about him. The Socialist Unity Party was always loyal to, and received substantial financial support from, Moscow, as documents discovered in Soviet archives were later to demonstrate.

On 26 February 1956, the Public Book Club, Almenna bokafelagid, republished Khruschev’s Secret Speech about Stalin with a foreword and notes by Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson and an introduction to the original 1957 edition by Aki Jakobsson, who had been a committed Stalinist and government minister for the Socialist Unity Party in 1944–7, but who had later turned his back on communism. The translator, archivist Stefan Pjetursson, had also been a communist, but had, in the early 1930s, dared to question some directives from Moscow. Then he was sent to Moscow to be re-educated, but as he kept being critical, he was about to be sent to a labour camp when, with the assistance of the Danish Embassy, he narrowly escaped from Moscow and became a tireless anti-communist, long as editor of the Social Democratic newspaper. In an addendum Lenin’s famous testament is printed: Icelandic communists had insisted that it was fabricated, but Khruschev had it published in 1956, for the first time in the Soviet Union. There, Lenin warned against Stalin. Franz Gislason made the translation. The book forms a part of a joint project by RNH and AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, on “Europe of the Victims”. The book is also a part of a series of republished works relevant to the history of the Icelandic communist movement, and was published both on paper and online. The republication of the book caused some stir in Iceland, as is shown in this report by Morgunbladid 25 February:

Prof. Gissurarson speaking at the Peruvian Ministry of Production.

RNH Academic Director, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, read a paper at the Peruvian Ministry of Production 26 January 2016 on practical matters concerning the management of fisheries and what other nations could learn from the experience of the Icelanders. According to him, the two key factors in the efficiency of the Icelandic system of ITQs, individual transferable quotas, were that the catch quotas were transferable so that they eventually ended up in the hands of those who were most efficient in utilising them, and that they were permanent, so that owners of fishing firms gained an interest in maximising the long-term revenue of the resource.

Professor Gissurarson discussed the idea of “the property of the nation” often invoked in discussions about natural resources, arguing that the most natural way of interpreting it was to regard it as a stipulation that the long-term revenue from the resource should be maximised. This was definitely not achieved by the state expropriating resources, but rather by allowing individual enterprises to utilise those resources as efficiently as possible. The newly created resource revenue subsequently flowed in natural ways into the economy. The seminar was well-attended.

The University of Iceland Press has recently published a book by Professor Gissurarson in English, The Icelandic Fisheries: Sustainable and Profitable. That book and Gissurarson’s lecture at the Ministry both formed parts in the joint project by RNH and AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, on “Europe, Iceland, and the Future of Capitalism”.